The women and children left behind in the Civil War

Some women joined resistance groups, some women remained as home keepers, but most of them suffered, writes Fionnuala Walsh

Members of  Cumann Na mBan at Collins Barracks in 1924. Picture: Conlon Collection

IN his 1924 book, The Victory of Sinn Féin, PS O’Hegarty described the response of women to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in damning terms, referring to them as hysterical “furies”.

Instead of women performing the role of peacemaker as promised by the suffragist campaign, he believed women had contributed to the escalation of conflict. Similar concern at the “impassioned pleas for the rejection of the treaty” made by women in the Dáil debates were expressed in Irish Life magazine in early 1922: “We used to be told that woman’s influence in politics would be pacific. But is that really so? ... A horrid doubt steals over my mind.”